It is all very well the Government telling us we all have to go green and be energy efficient etc, but when the simplest of tasks in the go green agenda is difficult, there are clearly some issues to be addressed.

Allow me to explain. The majority of the light bulbs in our house are energy saving ones, but a couple of rooms weren't, the living room, where the light is on the most, and the dining room, where the light is on the most, 2nd/3rd. So with a few days off work I set out to make us energy efficient by doing the simple thing and swapping them for energy saving bulbs. Only I couldn't.

I went to B&Q, I bought the smallest bayonet 11W (60W in old bulbage) bulb, brought it home, and it wouldn't fit in our uplight lampshade. I tried to chop off the bit of bolt that was stopping it from being installed, no joy. Grr. To top off things I tried it without the shade, and because we have a dimmer switch in the lounge, the switch buzzed, annoyingly so. So since we don't care for dimmer switches much (lights are either on or off) the next day we bought a new lampshade, that would fit our bulb, and a replacement switch. And all is now happily installed and working, and the light is much better, but still, it shouldn't have taken me this much effort or had to have me fork out another £8 for a new lampshade and switch.

As for the dining room, that is one of those four spotlight jobbies, and takes R50 reflector spotlight bulbs. And you've guessed it, no shops I've been into sell the bloody things in energy efficient form. You can get them online, but they'll cost you over a fiver to buy, plus P&P so when you need 4 of them, it is easily over 20 quid, and I'm sorry, that is too much. So for now, they'll stay the energy guzzlers they are (although two aren't working anyway, so that's energy efficient already ;o) If anyone knows of a shop where I can buy R50 energy efficient bulbs do let me know!

In the mean time, in summary, make an energy efficient bulb to replace each type of bulb, and make them available in all shops already selling light bulbs, now, and for less than £2 each!